News Americas, Weds. Feb. 1, 2023: As we begin Black History Month in the United States, we celebrate the many Black Caribbean immigrants who were an undeniable part of US Black History. Today we spotlight on one of the leaders of The African Blood Brotherhood for African Liberation and Redemption, a U.S. black liberation organization established in 1919 in New York City and whose members became the first black communists.
GEORGE PADMORE
George Padmore was one of the Caribbean immigrant founding member of The African Blood Brotherhood for African Liberation and Redemption organization. A journalist, radical activist, and theoretician, Padmore did more than perhaps any other single individual to shape the theory and discourse of Pan-African anti-imperialism in the first half of the twentieth century.
He was born Malcolm Ivan Meredith Nurse in Trinidad. Nurse attended Tranquillity School in Port of Spain, before going to St Mary’s College for two years. He transferred to the Pamphylian High School, graduating from there in 1918. After that he worked for several years as a reporter with the Trinidad Publishing Company.
In late 1924, he travelled to the United States to take up medical studies at Fisk University, a historically black college in Tennessee and then Howard University. In 1928 he dropped out of Howard’s law school and joined the American Communist Party and adopted the name George Padmore.
Padmore officially joined the Communist Party in 1927 (when he was in Washington, DC) and was active in its mass organization targeted to black Americans. In March 1929 he was a fraternal (non-voting) delegate to the 6th National Convention of the CPUSA, held in New York City. Padmore, through the African Blood Brotherhood for African Liberation and Redemption, raised made note of black people’s exploitation as a class and as a race, which led to his criticism of the C P’s failure to link its organizing in the U.S. Padmore died on September 23, 1959, aged 56, at University College Hospital in London.
